delay is essentially an echo where you can adjust the amount of echoes, how loud, and how soon after the initial sound the echo is.

In sync with the tempo you can use it to create interesting rhythms with percussion and synths

reverb simulates a sound inside different rooms where the sound will bounce off walls and create a more spatial effect. It can sound like anything from a studio to a swimming pool to a cathedral.

You use either to make your sound more wide and to fill empty space. Overuse can make your tracks sound overly muddy and wishy washy. You generally want to avoid reverb on lower frequency sounds as it will make it lose it's punchiness.

These 2 links will help you:

Link 1
Link 2

i suggest you just add a reverb on a synth in your daw and you will pretty fast understand what it is and where it fits best. its to create a false perception of being in a small room, big room, hall, consertstadium, or even outside. this is heavily used on trance because trance for some reason in the 90s had alot to do with the perception of being in outer space traveling to other planets etc etc (probably drug related). the irony of this is that its hardly any material in outer space, and therefore can be no echo or sound at all, making the whole thing quite laughable. but reverb and echo is to make the listener feel like he is somewhere else due to roomacoustics. delay is just an echo of your original sound, some times splitted to left and right to make it feel like you are between two mountains for example throwing back the sound at you. sometimes theres something called gravity on advanced delays, changing the echoed sound slightly for every repetition of the sound, for example taking away more and more highs and lows and add distortion, putting you left with a nasal noise sound in the middle. this technique is heavily used on progressive house and progressive trance during the 2001-2003 era, especially in breakdowns.

I tried to find the clip from the Troll Hunter where Otto Jespersen comes running through the forest yelling "TROOOLL!!!" but to no avail. Oh well well.

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quote:

ALFI - BOHICA - DJ MIX (Stream+Dropbox)

For one, reverb is used to give EDM more a 'human' feel (i.e., insofar as musicians do not create songs within a total vacuum devoid of acoustics).

Reverb adds spacy-ness. Delay means echos....

Both reverb and delay are common on lead sounds in trance. Reverb is used on a lot of pads. some percussion uses a very small amount of delay. Sometimes hi hats and ride cymbals have reverb.

Reverb can give really wide, lush tones. That's why it's used in trance so much, and most of it's variations have it too, like psy and uplifting and such.

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So if I understood this right, delay is simply an echo? and reverb is the space in which that echo fluctuates?

quote:

Originally posted by future_newbie So if I understood this right, delay is simply an echo? and reverb is the space in which that echo fluctuates?

Delay is echo, yes. If you ever clap your hands in a cathedral, the sound lingers. That's reverb.

___________________
Tranceport is the best album ever....

There is nothing wrong with being musically diverse.

My Soundcloud